It is well known to print individual sheets of a volume to be bound, place all of the printed sheets into a stack, crop one or more edges of the stack and to bind the sheets together by applying a binding adhesive to an edge of the stack of sheets. This is a time consuming and labour-intensive process.
It would be more efficient to provide pre-cut, uniformly sized sheets, print one or both surfaces of each sheet and provide a strip of binding adhesive to one or both surfaces of each sheet adjacent the edge to be bound. Then the printed and pre-glued sheets can be placed accurately in a stack, and the sheets adjacent the spine pressed so that the adhesive binds the sheet edges together.
It would also be desirable to provide an apparatus and method for applying a strip or strips of binding adhesive to a sheet as the sheet passes through a printer.